


Safe House

by glorious_spoon



Category: Agent Carter (TV)
Genre: Christmas, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Multi, Snowed In
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-20
Updated: 2016-12-20
Packaged: 2018-09-10 15:43:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8922952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glorious_spoon/pseuds/glorious_spoon
Summary: Peggy, Jack, and Daniel spend Christmas holed up in a safe house. Can be read as OT3 or cozy gen.





	

It was well past midnight when the door swung open, letting in both Jack and a gust of icy air.

“Close that, please!” Peggy called from her spot by the fire, setting her gun back down and reaching for her mug. They were out of tea, but someone—probably Daniel—had stashed packets of hot cocoa powder in their bags, and with the addition of the whiskey she’d found in the cabinets, a mug of it made a delightfully warm spot in an otherwise cold, miserable night.

“Nice to see you too, Peggy,” Jack said, closing the door and throwing the deadbolt. His ears and the tip of his nose were red, and there was snow caught in the collar of his coat, his eyelashes, his dark blond stubble. He looked hulking and rough-edged in his thick overcoat with the bulky radio equipment strapped to his back, not at all like the suave, clean-cut agent she was used to. “No, I didn’t run into any Leviathan patrols, thanks for asking, and as you might have guessed, our ride is going to be delayed due to inclement weather. Merry Christmas, by the way. How’s Sousa?”

“Sleeping, as any sensible person would be at this time of night,” Peggy said, indicating Daniel’s slumbering form with a nod of her head. “Goodness, is it Christmas already?”

“December twenty-fifth, same as last year.”

“Well, I’m afraid I haven’t got anything for you. Unless you’d like me to wrap up my spare socks.”

“I’ll try to contain my disappointment,” Jack said with a lopsided smile. He unstrapped the walkie-talkie and set it down in a dry bit of floor, bent to pull his snow-caked boots off. In his stocking feet, he crossed over to the hearth, shrugged out of his coat, pulled off his mittens, and laid both down on the warm stone to dry. He glanced over at Daniel, fast asleep in the cabin’s only bed. He’d protested that, but they’d both insisted. “How is he, really?”

“Stable,” Peggy said. “Sore, and probably due for a thorough check-up by a proper doctor when we get back to base, but stable.”

She didn’t add that she’d been sitting up mostly to listen to the sound of Daniel’s breathing, to reassure herself that he was still alive. She didn’t need to. Their escape had been far closer than any of them would have liked, and that was before dragging an injured and borderline delirious Daniel across nearly three miles of snow-choked wilderness to the safehouse.

Jack let out a sigh, relaxing visibly, and held his hands out to the warmth of the fire. “Good.”

“And our ride?”

“Your Howlies got an S-48 from God-knows-where, but they don’t want to try to land it in this wind if they don’t really need to. Told ‘em we could hole up for a day or so, and wait for it to blow over. Unless you think he needs medical attention right away.”

Peggy looked at Daniel’s sleeping face. He had a spectacular black eye, and there were little flecks of abrasion across the side of his face on the side where the blast had hit, but he was breathing easily. His wrist was certainly broken—she and Jack had splinted it with a sturdy twig and a length of twine—but, she thought, nothing worse than that. Nothing so dire that they needed to risk the lives of a rescue team in this gale.

Still, she hesitated for a long moment before answering. “No, you’re right. We’ll be quite cozy here until the storm clears.”

“Hell of a way to spend Christmas,” Jack said, his eyes on Daniel. His fingers twitched briefly, as if he was contemplating reaching out, but in the end, he didn’t. He rarely did, when she was there to witness it. It wasn’t shame, she thought, as much as the holdover of a world that was often so terribly unkind to men like him.

Peggy slid the thermos and the whiskey toward him, along with the other tin mug. “Have a drink,” she said. “Perhaps when we wake up, Saint Nick will have left presents under the munitions locker.”

Jack chuckled, pouring cocoa and a generous helping of whiskey into his mug. “You’re a regular ray of sunshine, Carter.”

“Well, I do try.”

* * *

She didn’t know what time it was when she dozed off on the hearth, but there was thin gray sunlight coming in through the single window when she woke with her head pillowed on Jack’s shoulder and her foot in a puddle of lukewarm snowmelt. Jack was still snoring softly, his breath shifting wisps of hair against her forehead. She could hear the whisper of snow against the window, and soft footsteps on the creaking floor.

With a groan, she levered herself upright. Daniel was out of bed, puttering about the tiny kitchen. They’d lost his crutch in the retreat, but he’d repurposed a long slat of wood as a cane and seemed to be getting about tolerably well. He turned when he heard her move, gifted her with a brilliant smile that was only a little marred by the bruising. “Morning, Peggy.”

“So it is.” With a grimace, she pulled her sopping wet sock off, rolled her shoulders to get the stiffness out of them, and got to her feet. Jack slept on, oblivious. “Christmas morning, in fact.”

“Really?”

“Jack reminded me last night. I’d honestly forgotten, what with one thing and another.” What with extracting Daniel from a recon mission gone horribly wrong, that was. She went to him and wrapped her arms around him, mindful of his sling. His good arm wrapped around her waist, warm and tight, and she put her cheek against his shoulder, the scratchy wool of his jumper tickling her nose, and just let herself _breathe_ for a moment.

She’d been so terribly afraid. There’d been no time to feel it in the midst of the crisis, but now, with Daniel warm and safe in her arms, her whole body seemed to ring with the echo of old fear.

But he was here, and he was safe. It was as good an end as she could have hoped for, and better than the one she’d been expecting and dreading since the moment yesterday when his radio went dead with her and Jack both too far away to help.

“I’m okay,” he murmured into her hair, an uncanny echo of her thoughts. “Thanks for getting me out.”

She smiled against his shirt. “I’d say ‘anytime’, but I sincerely hope there won’t be another time.”

“Amen to that,” came Jack’s dry voice from the other side of the room. When they pulled apart to look at him he was sitting up, looking dazed and possibly even more tired than he had the night before. His hair was an appalling mess, and there was soot on his cheek. He rubbed at it, blinking owlishly in the light, and got stiffly to his feet. “Ugh. Too damn old for this. You owe me, Sousa.”

“Yeah,” Daniel said quietly, letting go of Peggy to steady himself discreetly against the tabletop and directing a warm smile toward Jack. “I know I do.”

Something softened in Jack’s face, but all he said was, “Come on, let’s not get all sappy. We got anything to eat around here?”

“I expect so,” Peggy said, releasing Daniel with some reluctance and going into the tiny kitchen to rummage through the cabinets. “Sergeant Dugan gave me to believe that they use this cabin as a safe-house fairly regularly, and there ought to be—ah, there we go. We have condensed milk, tinned beans, tinned pork, tinned… is that bologna? How delightful. As well as an impressive array of C-rations and quite a lot of crackers. And whiskey.”

“So, what you’re saying is, Dugan stocked this place himself,” Jack commented, peering over her shoulder. “Sousa, you want franks and beans or ham, egg, and potato? Or, hey—looks like we got meat and hash, if that’d suit you better.”

By the table, Daniel groaned. “You gotta be kidding me. Like we didn’t get enough of those on the front.”

“Hey, unless you wanna hike outside and hunt moose with your service sidearm…”

“There’s no need for any of that,” Peggy said, kneeling down to dig through the cabinet. B-unit tins lacquered in gold were lined up neatly on the shelf, a few packets of caramels stacked to one side— somewhat more appealing than what passed for shelf-stable food in the American military, but not enough to make a meal for three people— and then her fingers landed on a box with a jolly-looking woman in a yellow handkerchief on the front. Ready-mix pancake flour. Thank goodness. She inspected the contents to make sure that they hadn’t been infested with weevils, then held up the box. “Will this satisfy the both of you?”

“Hallelujah,” Daniel said, reaching for his cane. It was, Peggy noticed now that she was looking at it, a less-than-ideal implement; he’d wrapped a shirt around the end to avoid splinters, but it still couldn’t be comfortable to grip. “I’ll go get the water.”

Before Peggy could formulate a protest, Jack stopped him. “You sit down.”

Daniel blinked at him. “What?”

“You almost died less than twelve hours ago,” Jack said evenly, reaching for his coat. His face was turned so that neither of them could see his expression, which was certainly intentional. “You got a broken wrist, and you don’t even have your crutch. Sit down and take a damn break for once in your life. I’ll go get water.”

Daniel stared after him as he snatched up the pail by the door, jammed his feet into his boots, and stalked out in a swirl of snow, but it wasn’t until the door slammed shut that he seemed to find words. His grip on the slat of wood was white-knuckled, but when he spoke he sounded more baffled than angry. “What was that about?”

Peggy sighed, setting the large metal skillet that was the cabin’s only piece of cookware on the stove top. “He was very worried about you, Daniel. We both were.”

"Oh," Daniel said, as though that hadn't occurred to him, and sank into his chair, still gripping his cane. “I really am okay, you know.”

“I know you are.” She dropped a hand on his shoulder, feeling the strength of his muscles, the warmth of his skin through his shirt. He was alive. He was fine. He’d had worse injuries arresting minor mobsters in Los Angeles— but there was some part of her that was still back in that bunker, listening to his voice choke off and go horribly silent over the radio, and would be for a while yet. It was worse for Jack, she thought. He didn’t know how to let things go. Didn’t know how to deal with _caring_. “Jack knows it too. It’ll just… take him a while to believe it.”

“Huh.” Daniel sounded thoughtful. Peggy raised her eyebrows at him, but he didn’t say anything else until the door swung open again.

Jack set the water pail down, stomped his boots to get the worst of the snow off of them. “Wind’s died down a little, but it doesn’t look like this is going to be stopping anytime…” he trailed off. Daniel had levered himself to his feet and was making his way slowly across the room, barefoot, his makeshift cane clunking softly on the wooden floor. “Sousa?”

“Hey,” Daniel said softly, and wrapped his good arm around Jack, pressing close, seemingly indifferent to the melting snow coming off of his coat. Jack went tense for a moment, then sighed, dropping his forehead to Daniel’s shoulder.

“You scared the hell out of me,” he said hoarsely, quiet like he was confessing a secret.

“I know,” Daniel said. “I’m sorry.”

From her angle, Peggy could see the way Jack squeezed his eyes shut, the way he pressed his cheek briefly to Daniel’s hair, but when he spoke again his voice was back to normal. “Well, don’t do it again. How’s the wrist?”

“Hurts,” Daniel said with succinct understatement, releasing Jack and stepping back to allow him to remove his boots and coat. “Hope you saved me some of that whiskey.”

“Oh, there’s whiskey aplenty,” Peggy said.

“Whiskey and pancakes,” Jack said, grinning suddenly, all little-boy mischief. “Sounds like a hell of a Christmas breakfast.”

Daniel shrugged. “I’ve had worse.”

“The griddle ought to be hot,” Peggy said. “If you’ll bring the water over, Jack, I can get started on the mix.”

“You offering to cook? Maybe I ought to have that drink first.”

“You’re welcome to the C-rations if you don’t like my cooking,” Peggy told him archly. “Meanwhile, bring the water over here and get the kettle going. There’s still a bit of hot cocoa powder left. And if you’re both very good, I’ve chocolates in my bag for after.”

Looking comically put-upon, Jack obeyed. Daniel chuckled and sat back down at the table while they worked, and in short order the cabin was redolent with the sweet smell of pancakes cooking. They ate crowded around the little table in a comfortable silence, and if both she and Jack sat a bit closer to Daniel than was strictly necessary, well, no one mentioned that.

It was, Peggy thought, far from the worst Christmas she’d ever had.

 


End file.
